The poem opens with Owen describing the soldiers as ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks’. This shows how they have been degraded and aged becoming almost in human. Moreover, ‘knock-kneed’ and ‘coughing like hags’ are both examples of vivid imagery and present the men as prematurely old and weakened, which they should not be. These men are supposed to be in the prime of their lives yet the way Owen is describing them does not suggest this. The phrases ‘Men marched asleep’ and ‘Drunk with fatigue’ show the readers the extent of the men’s exhaustion, they are so worn down they are even ‘deaf to the hoots of gas-shells dropping softly behind’ which sounds harmless and comforting due to the onomatopoeic sound of the word ‘softly’. This is very effective because readers can envisage the extent of the soldier’s exhaustion.
The second stanza is opened with ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’ The punctuation here mirrors the panic of men experiencing a sudden gas attack. Also, by making the words disjointed and monosyllabic, Owen highlights the fear and the helplessness of the situation. Owen then goes on to use a transferred epithet in ‘Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time....’ The transferred epithet, ‘clumsy helmets’, shows to the readers that it is not actually the helmets that are clumsy but the men because they are trying there hardest to fit their helmets in time therefore being very clumsy. Owen fits his helmet in time but looks ‘through the misty panes’ and sees someone ‘drowning’ in the chlorine gas. ‘As under a green sea, I saw him drowning’ introduces the first person narrative voice to the poem which brings immediacy to the poem and illustrates Owens firsthand experience of the war. The single two lines following the second stanza are placed own their own for emphasis which highlight the horror; it is so bad, almost unreal. The man who wasn’t able to fit his mask on in time plunges at Owen, ‘guttering, choking, drowning’. The onomatopoeia also brings the poem to life and enhances the true horrific realities of war.
Finally, in stanza three, Owen explains the significance of the incident. He addresses the reader directly by saying ‘If in some smothering dreams you too could pace/ Behind the wagon that we flung him. This helps readers because they feel more involved in the poem through the use of second person narrative voice and it is also helps us to imagine the horrendous image Owen is trying to convey of war. Owens’ diction in ‘Behind the wagon we flung him in’ is also very meaningful. The soldier was ‘flung’ into the wagon and this means that he was shown no respect or dignity; in the midst of the war there is no time to mourn the fallen or help the wounded. Furthermore, the repetition of face in lines nineteen and twenty make it clear which part disturbs the speaker most: the transformation in the face of the victim. Repugnant similes used in the third stanza such as ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’, ‘Obscene as cancer’ and ‘bitter as the cud/ Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues’ makes one final attempt at portraying the reality of war, something which is far from honourable and sweet. The simile ‘like a devil’s sick of sin’ is unimaginable because it is highly unlikely that the devil would ever become sick of sin. The only way, I think, is if there were too many deaths or too much hatred which is coincidently, just like war. A sarcastic tone is adopted when Owen refers to Jessie Pope (the key audience of this poem) as his ‘friend’. Their views and opinions are completely different. Pope is told by Owen that she would ‘not tell with such high zest/ The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori’ After all the gruesome images Owen saw throughout the war he couldn’t understand why anybody would tell their children ‘ardent for some desperate glory’ to go and participate in war.
In conclusion, I feel that Owen was successful in convincing readers that war was evil through his use of horrifying imagery. The imagery is associated with suffering, which aims to depict the truth about war experience. I can, after reading this poem, imagine what war was like in the trenches because of Owens use of various poetic techniques which help to convey exactly what he thought about war. I feel I have no option but to agree with Owen that war is evil because I cannot imagine how, after reading a soldier’s poem that experienced war first hand, war can be exalted for.
